One of the most heated debates that continues to go on within the gaming space, amongst gamers themselves, is the importance of graphics over everything else. It might not seem like this is a “heated discussion,” but trust us, it is. After all, there are many developers out there who want nothing more than to have “the best graphics for their titles,” but then they skimp on things like gameplay, UI, and other things, because “the graphics are the most important thing.” Recently, a discussion about graphics brought interesting questions about Red Dead Redemption 2 to light. And, like many other things, it all started on social media.
Specifically, a Twitter thread tried to call out someone for stating that “hyper realistic graphics have no soul,” listing a bunch of games that they claimed not only had that style of graphics, but indeed have soul. However, they themselves were countered in a reply/thread that pointed out the games they listed, including a certain Rockstar Games title, were more about “stylized realism” than actually being real.
“Not saying “realistic games” don’t have soul but literally half of what you just listed are all extremely stylised and don’t aim for photo-realism either at all or as a priority.
RDR2, GOT, Lost Records, TLOU2 (somewhat) being here is crazy.”
When someone else called THEM out on that, they doubled-down on their feelings by stating:
“RDR2 is extremely stylised. It’s meant to look almost like a painting. It’s real life on steroids.”
And that is far more accurate than you might think. When you look at the character models for Red Dead Redemption 2, you can easily see that they look incredibly human, like with the image of Arthur Morgan we have above. However, when you look at the game world and some of the cinematics that were within it, the stylized feel of the game is on display, which was likely Rockstar Games’ goal. They wanted to make it “feel like the Wild West,” but also give you the vibe that you were in something “different.” After all, the real world is cool, but the visuals of it don’t always “line up” when special things are going down.
That pertains to other games on the list, too, like with the Sucker Punch titles or the Naughty Dog games. Sure, they have realistic-looking graphics overall, but they’ve stylized their worlds so that it feels special and “acts” a certain way to help build upon the story and gameplay within.
And thus…the debate continues.
